world. A universal fall of prices had produced the same results with which
we are now so painfully familiar. In the half century terminating with
1840 the world had produced but $529,942,000 in gold, coinage value, and
$1,364,697,000 in silver, or some forty ounces of silver to one of gold;
yet their ratio of values had varied but little, and the variation was not
increasing. Why? Monometallists have raked the world in vain for an
answer. Bimetallists point to the only one that is satisfactory, namely,
the persistence of France in treating both metals equally at her mints.
But there were grave apprehensions that France alone could not maintain
the parity, and so, as aforesaid, all the world was hungry for gold.

And in all the world there was not one observer who dreamed that this
hunger would soon be far more than satiated, and the philosopher who
should have predicted half of what was soon to come would have been jeered
at as a crazy optimist. In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and
three years later in Australia. The supply from Africa and the sands of
the Ural Mountains had previously increased, so that in 1847-8 it was
equal to that of silver. But how trifling was this increase to what
followed. In 1849 there was still a slight excess of silver production,
and in 1850 the proportion was but $44,450,000 of gold to $39,000,000 in
silver. Then gold production went forward by great leaps and bounds. How
much was produced?

Well, the estimates vary greatly. Soetbeer places the amount at
$1,407,000,000 by the close of 1860; but Tooke and Newmarche have put it
about $100,000,000 less. In the same era the production of silver varied
but a trifle from $40,000,000 a year. A committee of the United States
Senate, appointed for investigating the facts, reported that in the twelve
years ending with 1860 the gold produced was $1,339,400,000; and in the
next thirteen years, ending with 1873, it was $1,411,825,000. Thus, in the